Aidnography

Hi all, Any weekly review post that features a link to Robert Chambers' work is a good post ;).  More seriously, lots of new research, reflections & reporting from humanitarian crises,  well-being of humanitarians & classic topics such as feminist foreign policy, expat salaries, #globaldev blogging + a really good doggo :) My quotes of the week Should we wish to see the troubling trend of aid worker violence reversed, we need a careful and pragmatic investigation into how the engines of foreign aid have evolved. We need to look more closely at the varying forms of securitized aid and understand their relation to aid worker violence. We must also suppress the tendency to absolve aid workers from any blame associated with their work, and look at their role objectively, with the goal of improving security for all. (What is behind increasing violence against aid workers?) There also needs to be a far clearer sense of where humanitarian organisations’ added value lies. For...

Hi all, Back from short trips to Austria & Germany-as a proud co-supervisor of a freshly minted doctor & inspired board member of an alumni association of the German Academic Exchange Service . In some ways, this week's review contains all the elements that make curating the blog so rewarding: Great investigative journalism, critical #globaldev commentary, important new research + the gems, critical insights from unusual places & positions. Enjoy! My quotes of the week Two Harvard Grads Saw Big Profits in African Education. Children Paid the Price. (A Is For Abuse) As a blind person, I knew that running or getting away to safety would be difficult. But I have found other ways to protest, through my social media: spreading information, talking with my friends and recording videos on Tiktok demanding that human rights be respected. To think that the protest only occurs in the streets is ableist. There are those of us who will not be able to be present for our safety. We c...

Hi all, From the closure of Nairobi's iconic Hilton Hotel to palliative care in Uganda, a dodgy app by US immigration & how universities can prepare students better for work in #globaldev this week's review is as eclectic as it should be...especially after the annual content surge around International Women's Day... P.S.: I'll be off to Innsbruck/Austria tomorrow to attend the thesis defense of my first co-supervised PhD student & then to Bonn/Germany for a board retreat so no weekly post next Friday! My quotes of the week As long as people in the West continue to understand local mining in the Congo as Kara’s “grim wasteland of utter ruin” as opposed to Wainaina’s landscape in which people laugh, struggle and make do in usually mundane circumstances, history will repeat. (Who wants to hear about White Saviourism gone wrong?) Local aid workers feel disempowered too. They are on the front line of this emergency, yet feel like decisions are made by faraway bosses...

Hi all, This week's link review is almost a double-feature: New #globaldev readings, but also a longer section on gender & feminism right in time for next week's International Women's Day! ' Women at leisure lie at the heart of feminist liberation' really spoke to me as credo for approaching 8 March! Enjoy! My quotes of the week As much as a third of the heavily cut UK overseas aid budget is being spent on housing refugees in the UK (Up to a third of overseas aid budget used for housing refugees in UK, MPs report) We attempt to show that feminists from the Global North try to be inclusive, inviting feminists from the Global South to collaborate, but that the CEE region is somewhere in between (...). Although there have been long-term efforts of some scholars calling for going beyond such concepts, they keep recurring, and there has been a lot of debate on post-socialism and the “in-betweenness” of our “non-region”. With voices missing from Central and Eastern E...

Hi all, Honduras, Kenya, Indonesia, China-and four very different environmental challenges, all linked to consumerist lifestyles & vague promises of 'development' contribute to a broader theme in this week's review; but there's more, from bad academic writing to humanitarians using AI, an economic history of cocoa & unconscious bias trainings. My quotes of the week “The main reason why there's a donor fatigue is because, as you can imagine, Somalia has been receiving humanitarian assistance for over three decades now and the situation has not been changing,” said Mohamed Abdi, country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council. “Many of the donors who have been paying money, a lot of money for that matter, to support Somalia will definitely get tired when they see their effort not bearing any fruits,” he said. (Donor Fatigue, Somalia Aid Cuts Worry Aid Workers) Labor exploitation, economic injustices, and environmental degradation are undermining the socio-...